1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to reorganizing the display of an image, and more specifically, to a method, apparatus, and related computer program product for reorganizing the display of a railway timetable diagram.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the railway transport field, a dispatcher has to schedule a number of trains every day. Each train involves a multitude of content, such as train number, departure time, arrival time, station of departure and terminal, etc., and also that a train needs to be hauled by one or more locomotives. Complex relationships exist among a train, a locomotive, and a railway network. For example, a train might change tractor locomotives from its departure to arrival, and a locomotive can draw different trains during different periods in a day. The dispatcher must be enabled to monitor states related to each train and each locomotive, as well as relationships between a train and a locomotive around the clock, to schedule the train and the locomotive based on the monitored information.
The dispatcher can obtain desired information from a railway timetable diagram. Typically, the railway timetable diagram displays operating conditions of trains and locomotives in a multiple of pages. Usually the railway timetable diagram is displayed in two-dimensional coordinates, with horizontal coordinates representing times and vertical coordinates representing stations which are usually displayed in various sections. For example, a cross point at a time t and a station s can represent that a train/locomotive is in the station s at the time t. Take a train as an example, when this train stops at stations s1, s2, . . . , sn at times t1, t2, . . . , to respectively, cross points c1, c2, . . . , cn in the railway timetable diagram can form a broken line which may be termed as a train leg. Like the train leg, a locomotive path is used for describing related time and location information of a locomotive.
However, the railway timetable diagram usually includes information about multiple trains and locomotives, so that a large amount of information is mixed together. In addition, a train leg and a locomotive path might traverse various sections in a page or even several pages. At this point, the dispatcher has to observe information in the various sections or even several pages between respective legs and paths. Inconvenient operations, cross-page lines, and cross-section lines can increase the probability of error. In the case that the dispatcher does not correctly monitor the railway timetable diagram, the efficiency of scheduling trains will be downgraded, and what is worse, accidents like train crashes might happen.